Friday, May 23, 2014

I've discovered Plastic Man's secret identity: Darrell Issa!

I think Darrell Issa must be Plastic Man, because they both know how to stretch. Talk about reaching!

A still-classified State Department e-mail says that one of the first responses from the White House to the Benghazi attack was to contact YouTube to warn of the "ramifications" of allowing the posting of an anti-Islamic video, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The memo suggests that even as the attack was still underway - and before the CIA began the process of compiling talking points on its analysis of what happened - the White House believed it was in retaliation for a controversial video.

Oh, for crying out loud. The deliberately provocative "Innocence of Muslims" video inspired riots and violence in Egypt and other locales throughout the Islamic world. Of course the White House wanted the video taken down.

And yes, the video contributed to the hysteria at Benghazi. The locals later made clear that they were genuinely upset by what they had heard concerning that video. The jihadist group Ansar Al Shariah seems to have opportunistically made use of the protest. Like piranhas swimming in the midst of trout, they launched an armed attack against the embassy.

Given the undisputed fact that the video had prompted outbreaks of civil unrest in more than one location in the Middle East, the administration acted quite responsibly when it made that request to YouTube. Why should the White House have waited? If the administration had waited, the Republicans would probably be damning Obama for his slow response.

I think that every reasonable person understands the point I'm making here. So who is Issa trying to impress? Does he really believe the nonsense he is spewing? If so, he's crazy.

Issa could find evidence of a Benghazi conspiracy in a recipe for apple cobbler.

The issue is not the worthiness in it's own right of trying to ban/damage control the YT video. The point being raised was that the decision to go with the YouTube rationale was made by the WH itself, not by the CIA. This is basically a procedural detail, but that reveals a further lie in the WH's version of events.

Of course, the critique here remains very shallow, and still doesn't address what US agencies were doing in Libya, which may bring up connections to Syria, cooperation with banned terrorist groups etc. Of course, the WH would seek to prevent any public discussion of that, so shallow procedural issues remains about all there is to discuss publicly, under the WH's political restrictions.

Strangely, a similar WH vs. CIA dichotomy came up with the "Ghouta gas attack" events, where the CIA/intelligence community did NOT sign off on the publicized justification of war/"evidence of Assad's guilt", that was again wholly a WH production, i.e. political not professional judgement.

posted by Jomon : 5:13 PM

Jomon, the distinction you draw -- "made by the White House itself" is nonsense. Obviously, they couldn't have known precisely what was going down in Benghazi. You know such things only through after-action investigation. But waiting would have been irresponsible, since the video was clearly causing trouble in many places.

This is another example of Issa over reaching, making a lot of noise about the WH taking the provocative nature of the film seriously and admitting that fact in a subsequent statement on September 14th. Issa must be sulking over Gowdy's elevated position as the Grand Poobah in the next round of conspiracy chatter.

These people will do anything but govern. They'll also do anything to set the stage for future Impeachment proceedings [but they need to find a reason]. If they clip HRC's presidential advantages, all the better. All the while whipping those voters up for November.